The invention relates to crop harvesters and more particularly to harvesters for row crops like melons, squashes and similar large fruits and vegetables. Early attempts to solve the problems attendant mechanical harvesting are exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 1,719,871 issued July 9, 1929 to R. D. Burts, entitled "Harvester for Peanuts and other Plants." The Burts harvester and other similar devices operate in open fields in an atmosphere of abrasive particles sent aloft from the soil of the cultivated field by the activities of the harvester itself. Harvesters are conventionally used in gangs along with mobile conveying and scheduled trucks which accompany the harvester-conveyor in the field. Dirt and dust from the soil is abrasive and quickly wears moving parts. With the harvesting devices having a multitude of moving parts, repairs are often necessary, and it is desirable to have a harvester with the capability of being rapidly repaired to cut costs and to minimize down time.
In row harvesting the produce may be hand picked from several adjacent rows and the selected produce distributed in furrows along which the harvesters are operable. Therefore, the frequency of the produce in a furrow may be greater than normal growing distribution. Adjacent pick-up pairs of arms of the harvester must be closely spaced so as to gather most, if not all, of the produce in a furrow without repeated passes along the furrow. Raising the produce with the harvester arms from the furrow to a conveyor must not damage the produce, so the gripping hands of the pick-up arms must be firm without crushing the produce or marring its exterior. Since produce is not normally uniform in size and weight the arms need to accommodate a significant range of size and weight. Previous devices have been unable to achieve all of these parameters in a harvester, and have missed produce, marred the produce and broken down frequently from friction wear and have also been costly to repair and down frequently.
A critical efficiency factor in rotary wheel harvesters is the space between pick-up arm pairs as the arms sequence through the pick-up cycle as stated above. Since the available space for any mechanism diminishes as the radial arms approach the center of wheel rotation, it is essential that the mechanism of the arm be very small near the hub such that a multiplicity of arms may fit around the powered wheel. One of the factors in determining the number of arms needed is the average size of the produce being harvested. Size determines the needed chord extent of the gripping portion, or "hand" of the arm, and therefore the extreme circumferential size of the pick-up wheel assembly. The extreme wheel diameter is limited by the space between wheel and arm tips necessary for the take-off conveyor and the height of the conveyor or receiving bin apparatus associated with the harvester. The number of arm pairs for a given wheel is largely determined by these parameters, and the distance from the wheel center to the arm pivot is a factor of the chord width of the pivoting mount for the pick-up arms. Therefore, the optimum harvester has a pivot mechanism and mounting apparatus that allows a minimum chord expanse at the arm pivot which is also easily attached or removed because of the large number of arms required.